Agricultural Enterprise Initiatives of USAID/Kenya - Land Tenure and ...

partners were quite frustrated by MoL/GOK’s apparent lack of commitment to addressing the
recommendations of the “Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal/Irregular Allocation of Public Land” (Ndung’u
Commission, 2004). It is generally believed that GOK’s inertia on the Ndungu report is because it implicates
powerful interests in the previous and current government in the illegal and irregular acquisition of land.
Finally, there are concerns that the reforms in land administration, use and management proposed in the
dNLP are not anchored in Kenya’s current Constitution. While this is no fault of the dNLP, some believe the
policy’s adoption and certainly its implementation would require constitutional amendments to be properly
legally grounded.
Though these concerns formed a backdrop to the advancement of the draft policy, the MoL and
development partners prepared an ‘Implementation Project Document’ (September 2007) to guide and
budget the land reform process over a two-year period - October 2007 to September 2009. Even though the
project document has been accepted by MoL, enthusiasm has waned among development partners for rapid
implementation of the land reform program.
January 2008 marked the beginning of a political crisis that rocked the nation – the result of a bitterly
disputed outcome of the Presidential election process. It intensified Kenya’s polarization along ethnic and
political lines. Post-election violence resulted in over 1,000 deaths, over 350,000 internally displaced people
(IDPs), the establishment of over 300 camps to accommodate IDPs and a massive humanitarian relief effort.
Virtually all Kenya’s development partners have adopted a ‘No Business As Usual’ approach to program
implementation. Development activities have ground to a halt in most disturbance-effected areas, and
partners have minimized their contacts with GOK entities. In many instances development partners have
slowed program implementation. All are hopeful the political crisis will pass, but it is accepted that any
program for its long-term resolution must address land reform in the areas of: i) distribution and access, ii)
utilization and planning, iii) understanding the basis for conflicts in land and property and in iv)
administrative procedures and institutions. Certainly in USAID’s geographic focal areas for agricultural
development, natural resource management and biodiversity conservation it is apparent these four critical
issues of LTPR affect nearly all program interventions.
Once relations among GOK entities and development partners become more ‘normalized’, it’s obvious that
approval of the dNLP and the workings of the land reform ‘Implementation Project’ will move at a ‘certain’
pace. USAID believes it might be able to address the four critical issues noted above at its project sites to
complement the dNLP adoption process and the land reform ‘Implementation Project’. To do so will require
that USAID and its partners understand these land-related influences and use this knowledge to shape project
activities to address constraints where practicable and to scale-up results. To that end, USAID/Kenya will
support a ‘LTPR Assessment of Agricultural Enterprises’ and two other studies/activities that are linked to it
as described below. Further, it is hoped that relevant findings and recommendations from these and other
assessments may be used to enrich the dNLP, the Land Reform Support Program and the ‘Implementation
Project’.
1. ‘LTPR Assessment of Agricultural Enterprises’. USAID/Kenya’s agricultural program has supported the
development and strengthening of a number of agricultural value chains with a primary purpose of
raising incomes of small and medium scale, non-subsistence farmers. Interventions focus on policy
reform in specific commodity sectors, increasing farm productivity and energizing commodity markets
through access to credit and business development services (BDS). Primarily, the programs have targeted
the horticulture, maize and dairy value chains with secondary emphasis on pastoral livestock and fisheries
in Lake Victoria. They assist micro and small entrepreneurs in these sectors and provide support to
farmer groups, linking them to private sector markets, input suppliers and other private sector BDS
providers.
USAID desires clearer understanding of how the dNLP impacts sustainability and growth of the small
and medium-scale farming sector. USAID will assess how inefficiencies in land administration, landrelated
conflicts and, in particular, women’s inability to access land impact on the success of small and
medium scale agricultural enterprises. Other areas of analysis will include: i) the regularization of rights in
32 LTPR ASSESSMENT: AGRICULTURAL ENTERPRISES IN KENYA